I pondered. If I said he could keep some, he would hold on to more than I said he could. He would also think me weak for yielding to him in any way. That was dangerous. If I tried to cut him off without a piaster, I ran the risk of a knife in the kidneys or ground glass in the breading of whatever the Shqipetari cooks fried next. That was also dangerous. More dangerous? Less? How could I judge?

Audacity. Audacity again. Always audacity. Some Narbonese politician said that. If memory serves, he got his head bitten off a couple of years later, but if you’re going to fret about every little thing… Besides, he was just a fool of a Narbonese (but I repeat myself). If I hadn’t had more audacity than I knew what to do with, I wouldn’t have been moments away from becoming one of the crowned heads of the world. And so-on with it.

Besides, I had a really demonic thought. “I will tell the scribes you’re making the transfer,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll be interested in watching it and writing about it. Aren’t you? They’ll probably want to peek into the chests to see all the gold and silver. You should let them, to make sure nobody has any doubts about anything.”

I waited. The longer I waited, the less patient my face got. The longer the silence stretched, the closer Max’s hand drew to the hilt of his sword-in a polite sort of way, of course. Why, certainly!

Essad Pasha looked at me. He took another long look at Max’s right hand. And then he surprised me. He threw back his head and laughed like a loon, or perhaps like a scribe. “Your Highness-your Majesty-I think serving under you will be a real privilege. And I would like to see the face of the first fellow fool enough to try to cross you. North and south, east and west, there will be no escaping your wrath.” He laughed again, even more raucously. “And that whoreson malt-horse drudge who styles himself a count of the Dual Monarchy! That poor inch of nature proves himself of no account whenever he opens his mouth to speak. Fond witling, to imagine you some sort of mad Narbo. No infidel Schlepsigian dog would have the wit to stymie me-me!-at every turn. See? I speak frankly and openly. I own myself stymied.”

Max coughed. I smiled, doing my best to make my teeth seem sharper than they were. Audacity. Audacity again. Always audacity. “Any man who admits to being stymied-who brags of being stymied-surely has some scheme to stymie the stymier. When I come back to the palace after my coronation, the first thing I aim to do is examine the treasury. If anything seems wrong in even the slightest way, Essad Pasha, north and south, east and west, there will be no escaping my wrath. Is that plain enough, or shall I speak more clearly?”

“That is very plain,” Essad Pasha answered. “And I have no such scheme. Of that you may rest assured. May my head answer if I lie.”

He’d just put his scheme back on the shelf. Of that I might rest assured. If he came up with another one he thought he could get away with, he would use it. Of that I might rest assured, too. “Shall we go back down to the hostel and the fane?” I said. “It should be about time for the ceremony to begin. And I do need a moment to tell those scribes about the transfer of the treasury. Watching all the sparkly things move is bound to fascinate them.”

“No doubt it will, as with any jackdaws,” Essad Pasha said with a martyred sigh. “Well, your Highness-your Majesty-you are right. It is time to return to the hostel and the holy fane. And of course you may tell the scribes whatever brings your heart delight.” He sighed again. “After all, if I tried to stop you, you would anyhow.”

I did tell the pack about the treasury. That yielded even more chaos and commotion and entertainment than I hoped it would. All the scribes tried to figure out how to be two places at once. Since even demons have trouble with this, to say nothing of the greatest sorcerers of our age and every other, it handily defeated the gaggle of second- and third-rate scribes who’d come to this fourth-rate town hoping for a first-rate story.

My story.

Some of them rushed off to the Consolidated Crystal office (yes, even a fourth-rate town like Peshkepiia has one-CC is everywhere) to file both stories before either one of them happened. This would have been a miracle, if not necessarily one of rare device.

Other scribes proved perfectly suited for the Nekemte Peninsula, where perhaps the commonest sound in the land is that of one hand…washing another. They formed quick impromptu teams. One man would keep an eye on the treasury transfer while the other kept an eye on me. Each would write a story. Both would file both stories. Not quite a miracle, but something that would look like one for the home crowd. Very often, that’s more than good enough.

And then there was poor Bob. None of his countrymen wanted to team with him. No doubt they’d seen him in action-or inaction-before. He couldn’t team with anyone from a different kingdom, because he spoke only Albionese. By the way he spoke, he didn’t have much command of his allegedly native tongue, either.

“What would you do in my fix, your Highness?” he asked lugubriously.

Run away, change my name, and try to pretend the whole thing never happened, I thought. Or maybe I’d just slit my wrists. But, since Halim Eddin didn’t speak Albionese, I didn’t have to understand him. “North and south, east and west, thy fame hath gone before thee,” I told him in Hassocki. He followed not a word of it, but Essad Pasha laughed and Max very nearly smiled.

I had no royal robes to don. With the Hassockian Empire at war with so many of its neighbors, no one thought my colonel’s uniform out of place. Considering what the members of the diplomatic corps were wearing, I was among the most modestly attired men going into the Quadrate God’s fane. I’d thought the diplomats were gaudy the night before-and I’d been right, too. They were even gaudier now.

Jean-Jacques-Pierre-Roland wore black jacket, black cravat, black trousers, and white shirt. But the shirt, as was usual for a Narbonese, was a sea of ruffles. He had a scarlet sash draped from his right shoulder to his left hipbone, a glowing turquoise sash draped from his left shoulder to his right hipbone, and an iridescent green sash doing duty for a cummerbund.

Vuk Nedic of Vlachia wore wolfskin dyed purple-spectacular, but not a success. Barisha of Belagora had on a uniform of golden watered silk that should have made a lovely evening gown for a lovely lady. Inside the fancy clothes, he himself remained a Vlachian semisavage. And Count Rappaport still found a way to upstage him. The noble from the Dual Monarchy looked as if he’d killed and skinned a candy cane, or possibly like a barber pole with legs and enameled decorations. However ludicrous the getup, his eyes still saw everything and believed nothing.

After I saw him, I stopped paying attention to the other diplomats. I assumed no one could outdo that uniform (if something so obviously one of a kind could be dignified by the name), and I was…almost right. I’d reckoned without the Quadrate God’s votary.

He wore cloth of gold heavily encrusted with pearls and precious stones. His robes must have weighed more than a good suit of chainmail; I marveled that he could walk at all. His curly gray beard, which tumbled down as far as the bottom of his chest, hid some of the mystic symbols on the front of the robe. His long, flowing locks, tumbling down under a miter as massive as a battle helm and far shinier, covered up whatever ornamented his shoulders and upper back.

He smelled strongly of himself (votaries of the Quadrate God bathe once a year whether they need to or not, and I’d say his time was just about up) and just as strongly of sandalwood. The latter scent warred with but failed to defeat the former. Behind him, less gorgeously robed acolytes swung thuribles north and south, east and west. Their scented smoke was spicy with the exotic odors of frankincense and myrrh. But what came from their censers failed to censor what came from the votary (and the acolytes’ hides hadn’t met soap and water any time lately, either).